@Eiwynn Thanks for the encouragement!! It’s good to hear I’m not the only one who looks at their beginning and goes like “time to redo everything and question all my life decisions” LOL
Yeah, to be honest I’ve never finished a writing project that wasn’t less than 15k words, so I don’t want to bog myself down on fixing stuff when maintaining momentum until I hit a finished draft is top priority! I’d rather have a finished imperfect draft since I know how hard it is for me to finish things.
What I said: “I’m gonna post a WIP thread mid-November!”
Me, rereading that: “Welp, that aged like milk.”
Sometimes I forget that November is the busiest month for me oof. Life hit HARD and I only moved chapter 3 slightly further along. Might change it up and post the demo at 2.5, because I feel bad about delaying this about what, like three times now? So yeah. Low-key feeling crappy about it.
I feel you. It sucks when you don’t hit a time-based goal. But don’t beat yourself up on it too much!! It just teaches your hindbrain to not like writing and to associate it with bad feelings. So long as you keep going, any progress is good progress
I need to get off worldbuilding and work on the characters and plot itself… But the worldbuilding is so much fun 
Vampires, anarchists, royal bastards, general aristocrat bickering, this is getting out of hand again. So much for something simple.
But I don’t want this to be on a large scale at all. Need to figure out how to turn this selfish, hypocritical main character into a more likeable figure by the end of things, mostly by resolving his own issues that’s between him, himself, and his family. No revolutions allowed. Then again, if your cousin is the King of the (alt-historical) United Kingdom… there’s no way you’re not deep in some nasty stuff in the first place, like it or not…
Arghhh I need to shrink this
I feel you, every idea I have turns into something too big for a first game
Honestly, I wouldn’t even worry about something really gripping and dramatic right off the bat. To me, the beginning of the game is meant to convey important world details and to possibly introduce some of the main cast we’ll be seeing throughout the game. Not that having an action packed, dramatic beginning isn’t a good thing, it definitely can be! Personally though, I’d rather sit down and talk with a character and get to know them rather than start off in some sort of battle.
Whichever way you do it though, just know there is no wrong way! Numerous people have started their stories off with all different kinds of beginnings, and there is a right way to do every one of them!
As for an update for myself, I’ve gotten out the first half of the last scene of chapter two, which ended up being about 150,000 words total by itself, bringing the total word count of the project to over 400,000 and counting. It has been rough these past couple of months, but I’m proud of everything I put out that’s in the chapter so far and that’s all the matters to me. hopefully by January I can have Chapter 2 completely finished and be onto chapter 3; what I consider to be the gut punch. Happy writing everyone!
^ Hollywood has everyone trending sensationalist hooks. Every time I read or watch something that opens on action then flashes back, my soul dies a little. Execs don’t understand story. What you’re doing is taking a major plot point and rendering it meaningless through a lack of context. This also leads to histrionic one-upsmanship, with opening sentences like, “It all started when I murdered my dog over an active volcano with my the noose my father was hanged by on the 4th of July.”
Try Ursula Le Guin: there was a wall.
Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind! I guess, idk, I think I read somewhere that games pull in the reader more if you start off with something more climactic/dramatic, and I was second-guessing myself on how I ought to start my story. I was thinking it might be too slow-paced/boring.
HAHAHA omg thats amazing im gonna start my next story with THAT EXACT SENTENCE. and I won’t credit you for it, either. That line is mine, now. 
HAHHA I’d read that story for sure.
I second this! I don’t usually expect the first bit of the story to grab me by the throat, and I’m also perfectly happy for the story to start off slow and do a bit of world-building / character-building (or even just give me a better feel for the writer’s style).
Like, sure if you whisk me off on a hiking trip with a bottle of champagne within minutes of knowing me, I’d be pretty thrilled - but I’m also cool if you start off with just a good firm solid handshake.
P.S. HAHAHA this made me laugh, but then again I’d argue that it was a hella dramatic hook though, and p much came straight out with one of the central themes. "Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.” Are you on the inside or outside, self or other, both - at once? Pure genius.
Finally, after a year or two and a half, I been blessed a chance to write something for so long. My W.I.P. has been very lonely lately. I’ve finish half the draft, and still write about 10 word or less.
Now, I need to:
Just waiting for my public exam to finish NEXT YEAR. So suffering I must.
Wish you guys a very happy writing and a wonderful day. 
Send help, I have messed up the royal family tree all the way back to the Stuarts 
and everyone is named George, Charles, Frederick, William, or Henry… running out of names here.
I honestly don’t feel like this will be a story that can be really branched, and if there are choices, it would just be flavour text that’s used to explore the universe. Would people prefer that over clicking “next”?
I got my Vampire Jam game submitted today. >300hrs logged in the last 29days. Thanks, everyone, for your support and encouragement.
Anyone making any last-minute Nov sprints?
I’ve made plans to pull an old-fashioned college move - invited a buddy over after work to see how far I get plugging away at my WIP. He’s gonna be working on something else, but it’d be nice to have company. It’s the middle of a work week, but why not show up to work on 1 Dec lookin’ like a zombie… right? 
I hit my 10k this morning. While I had toyed with trying for 15 or 20 and ended up just barely getting my normal, I just try to remember where I was this time last year and that having a regular output insures that I will (eventually) finish projects and get them published, even if this rate is slower than it was for Toaster and Parenting.
Here we are at month’s end. My goals for November were:
Three out of four starting goals met, with additional mid-month events happening as well, is a pretty good month.
NaNo participants tried to write 50,000 words this month; I only ended up with about 10,000 new words written. Maybe next year I will try to make this a main focus of mine.
There also was a Vampire Jam this month. @dwsnee and @poison_mara both completed and entered games into the Jam. Both of these writers have done something that I do not think I could do, so I admire both of them for their awesome accomplishment.
I’ll be opening up the December 2021’s Writer Support Thread shortly.
Edit:
I’m sorry you are feeling this way. If it helps: I always feel this way too. Just take everything one step at a time, and don’t look beyond that step for now.
You can always look to write a sentence or two … that is all you need to do to keep moving forward on your writing. And sometimes, all of us find our plates full… no matter who we are
I had a bit of a frustrating time in November, especially the latter half where I’ve had shoulder pain preventing me from doing as much writing after work than I’d like (my current day job is also writing so it’s tough when I get aches and pains) and a bad cold.
BUT. I have done a nice bunch of stuff.
I coded this but didn’t write it, because the shape of my deadlines meant that I needed to tweak my timings - see more below.
I did this! I also coded Chapter 4 of Noblesse Oblige and am getting towards finishing drafting the chapter. It’s going to be the longest chapter so far!
And - I announced Noblesse Oblige and put up a demo, which has had some generous and thoughtful feedback! I’m really happy to have it out in the world 
edit: posting this has inspired me to get a bit more into Chapter 4 before the month is out!
I might just be weighed down with all sorts of things at the moment, so take this with a grain of salt, but my optimism has been almost entirely engulfed by despair. There are too many things on my plate right now and I’m finding it really difficult to put time aside for writing, which I actually want to be doing. Which is embarassing, because I don’t even work yet, I’m not having to fend for myself and those who are can still somehow find time for all sorts of stuff.
I need to reorder, like, all my priorities, I guess. But I’m sick of making lists.
It’s been a tough month, primarily because I chose a task that’s difficult to quantify. So even when I’m working hard, it’s hard to see the progress with the naked eye, as it were. It’s especially dispiriting for me because I looked up my progress at around this time last year, and the game has only increased by about 10K words in that entire time.
Now, of course, I know that adding word count is not the only part of writing a game. That’s why I undertook editing and testing as my main tasks for November. It’s still hard, though, not to feel a twinge when I look at my word count spreadsheet.
I was lucky enough to manage all of these things despite a pretty rough month. But, I’m fortunate to have a fairly flexible schedule, and the fact that I’m chronically unemployed helps a lot. (I have to look at the positives of that situation, and this is definitely the big one.)
It seems like a lot of folks are struggling right around now, and I absolutely get it. Most of my roadblocks of late have been non-writing ones, but it feels like the time of year for roadblocks. This too shall pass, but you’re allowed to hate it in the meantime.